063: the big door prize
rachel davies on the guilty pleasure of braindead tv and twin book covers
After a gloomy and tense week, it seems right to send out an incredibly funny and insightful dispatch from my friend, Rachel Davies. Rachel is my oldest internet friend i.e. a friend I first met online who I’ve now come to know and treasure IRL. I take incredible delight in telling people that we’ve known each other for seven or so years, though we only met for the first time last year. Having Rachel as a friend is an incredibly enriching experience that has taught me a lot—about living in New York, about being a writer, and about being a friend. (Sorry to get corny but it’s true! I have to speak my truth!) Every single conversation we have is equal parts serious and silly, and they keep me grounded when I get a little bit too media groupie. Even typing this and thinking about our friendship, I can clearly hear their cackle and see their little ‘I can’t believe you said that’ headshake that is definitive of our friendship.
Strange astrological happenings or not, I think we can all agree that it’s been a tough and weird few weeks. But laughing with friends can break up those moments when anger or fear or dread or irritation ripple through us. So, even though none of us are in the room together right now, I hope that when you laugh out loud reading this (which I know you will), know that I am laughing right alongside you. And I hope it makes you feel a little better. (Actually sorry for getting vv sentimental and emotional but it’s been a long week.)
xx Akosua
At my most unlikeable, I feel compelled to draw comparisons between the decreasing inhabitability of the media world and our very planet. At my most likable, we’re not standing in the face of the shuttering of BuzzFeed News, Vice, and PAPER. This and the shameful reactions to the WGA strike from certain outlets have been on the brain this past week.
At my worst, this week, I felt like one of the people execs are targeting with their “second screen” programming. My partner and I watched all seven episodes of The Big Door Prize, a television show that in title, and beyond, makes no sense. We started it when we were High on Marijuana, and continued to watch it while sober, awake to the higher levels of our brain functionings, yet still watching a show about a town that is thrown into shambles when a mysterious photo-booth-like machine arrives and tells every citizen their “true potential.” Galaxy brain Lifetime movie shit. Nevertheless, I await the eighth episode with bated breath.
I’ve rejected the term “guilty pleasure” and yet I do feel guilty for watching this…and it must be giving me some pleasure, right? It’s not that I reject the value of bad TV, but that I feel that self-important “Every Vote Counts!” itch anytime I contribute to the numbers that show that people do indeed want something to throw on while they fold the laundry/sort through email/scroll Instagram and press ‘remind me in 15 minutes’ to their iOS screen time warnings. I didn’t watch Emily in Paris, not because I didn’t think I’d have had fun (I’m sure I would have!) but because SOMEONE HAS TO TAKE A STAND FOR OUR COUNTRY.
Okay, okay, I realize, dear reader, you did not sign up for this diatribe and in fact you don’t even know me. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot—or if you liked whatever that was, I’m so pleased to meet! I promise I’m thinking intellectual things and will write them down for you, as our splendid host Akosua does, week after week, month after month. I write every day for work but I guess when I’m unleashed on the freewheeling scroll of a newsletter I get the writing equivalent of that thing where you haven’t left the house for a week and you’ve lost all social graces.
I read Catherine Lacey’s The Autobiography of X1 this past week and was FLOORED by it. I’ve been a Catherine Lacey believer ever since last year when I read Pew and listened to her speak in this workshop I was in. I think it does an amazing job of articulating the essentially cannibalistic act of writing a biography of someone you personally knew while they were alive (something I was struck by when reading Sigrid Nunez’s Sempre Susan years ago), while contrasting that with the reality that more often than not, biographies that are written by people who didn’t know the figure before their death are, at best, off pitch.
On a much more superficial note—or should I say “design sensitive” note—I love seeing accidental book cover (fraternal) twins and I am moved by this season’s pair of them. The Autobiography of X looks a lot like Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and Elliot Page’s memoir looks a lot like Eileen Myles’s I Must Be Living Twice. It must be said that each pair is not entirely different in demographic/appeal so I do have to wonder how accidental these similarities are…
Other quick hits of my week beyond, uh, The Big Door Prize and The Autobiography of X:
The first ep of the Fatal Attraction reboot with Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan. I watched this and immediately texted Akosua like, “Holy shit they’re so hot together” and later saw some critics say they don’t have chemistry. Am I just unhealthily horny for each half already or am I more attuned to the ways of sensuality than these writers? At this point we’ve yet to reach a conclusion (and I haven’t watched more than one episode, so maybe things get STIFF) but I’m eager to meet one (1) other person who’s watched this so I can hear what they think.
The Stop Gap, a new blog from Jo Livingstone and Daniel Lavery that I’m excited about.
The Met Gala red carpet. The nervous energy of a livestream is positively delicious to me and I appreciate the fact that there’s no award show song and dance to the Met Gala, you’re just there trying to look gorgeous and win Anna Wintour’s approval (or like, not her disapproval).2
This picture of James Corden and Tom Cruise:
A haunted image
OK! That’s my time.
RD
Thanks for reading! You can follow Rachel on Instagram, @rachelcomplains and find their writing on their website. If you’re thirsty for more guest posts from my sexy friends: Tony Zelenka, Jess Kasiama, Blake Mancini, Kyle Curry, Sonja Katanic. I’m accepting (and begging for) submissions to a Taylor Swift zine (TS x Matty Healy fanfiction) welcome!
In case you need further endorsement, this book is on my TBR list and includes what I love the most: citations
Ed. note: I’m just popping in here to say I saw the most bizarre blind about how it seems like Olivia Wilde paid for her ticket because her dress wasn’t PRE-APPROVED by Anna Wintour which makes you think…if Anna is checking the girlies before they enter the door where do so many of them go wrong?